"We're about to sell an album like nobody else sold it before," RZA told Forbes. "We're about to put out a piece of art like nobody else has done in the history of [modern] music.

"We're making a single-sale collector's item. This is like somebody having the sceptre of an Egyptian king."

The group revealed plans to tour the album before it goes on sale by taking it from gallery to gallery for the public to pay and listen to it.

The Wu - Once Upon a Time in Shaolin

"By adopting a 400-year-old Renaissance-style approach to music, offering it as a commissioned commodity and allowing it to take a similar trajectory from creation to exhibition to sale, as any other contemporary art piece, we hope to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music," RZA said.

"We hope to steer those debates toward more radical solutions and provoke questions about the value and perception of music as a work of art in today's world."

Meanwhile, Wu-Tang Clan are expected to release a new standard album later this year titled A Better Tomorrow.